Prior to that year, most of the program’s history revolved around either Doug Flutie or Glenn Foley. Flutie cast the largest shadow after clinching the Heisman Trophy with a best-10 ranking during the 1984 season, but few quarterbacks were able to reach the heights matched by Foley’s emergence in the early-1990s era coached by Tom Coughlin. Every other passer seemed to have some type of knock against him, and even Brian St. Pierre’s two-year span after the turn of the century landed seasonally short while accounting for half of the career production by two four-year starters.
Matt Ryan’s emergence completely altered that perspective, and the future No. 3 overall draft pick left Boston College with numbers equal to or greater than both Flutie and Foley. To this day, Ryan still stands alone as the only passer with 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns in a single season.
At times a compliment to the team’s overall depth, the growing years between the present tense and Ryan’s generational run makes it more difficult to identify BC’s overall identity. A run-first team, to be sure, the Eagles spent the last decade morphing from a read-option offense to a more modern pass-first scheme before finally emerging as a dual threat team over the past three years.
Unsurprisingly, changing identities on a more regular basis left the Eagles without a regular name atop the depth chart. Whether injury or performance related, BC started multiple quarterbacks annually over the last six seasons. Anthony Brown became Dennis Grosel, who became Phil Jurkovec, who became Grosel again before Emmett Morehead and Thomas Castellanos grabbed the reins ahead of last year’s late season switch to Grayson James.
That past left current head coach Bill O’Brien with a decision over the offseason, and after opening the competition between James and Alabama transfer Dylan Lonergan, the redshirt sophomore originally from the Stone Mountain suburbs of Atlanta earned the next starting role at a position expected to settle and continue the ongoing reorganization and reformation of a dominant BC offense.
“After careful consideration throughout the winter, spring and summer, and today into training camp, we’ve decided to go with Dylan Lonergan as the starter,” said O’Brien on Tuesday. “Look, it was a true competition. I give a lot of credit to Grayson James. [He] is an excellent teammate, a really good player, a really improved player. At the end of the day, we went with Dylan because we feel like he gives us the best chance to win right today.”
Placing Lonergan atop the quarterback position doesn’t change BC’s overall transition under O’Brien, nor does it devalue James or the process that placed the Florida International transfer in a starting role at the end of last season. Nearly leading the Eagles to a win in the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl after trailing by 18 points was a heightened accomplishment after James helped them win their way into the postseason, and his leadership settled the position.
It is, however, the next logical step in settling the concrete scheme utilized by a team that’s preparing for its first game. An offensive coach by nature, O’Brien admittedly spent last year with a scheme molded by an abbreviated offseason and an inherited roster, so utilizing the full offseason to rebuild the team in his desired image allowed him to open the competition after Lonergan’s addition augmented the incumbent starter who already had an understanding of last year’s stripped-down playbook.
“It was a great competition,” said O’Brien. “There’s a lot that goes into it. It’s command of the huddle, anticipation, accuracy, knowledge of the defense, knowledge of the offense. It was a great competition.”
“We can’t say enough about Grayson and the way he handled it,” he added. “He’s obviously disappointed, but also like, ‘Coach, I’m going to be a great teammate.’ That’s what you’re looking for at Boston College. I can’t say enough about the guy. He’s got a future in football. He’ll be ready to play if called upon. I have great respect for him, his journey, his part on this team. He takes it very seriously, and he works extremely hard every day. I can’t say enough about Grayson James.”
The competition unquestionably sharpened both quarterbacks over the spring and summer, so placing Lonergan is more of a tribute to offense’s ability to continue growing into the season and beyond. A former four-star recruit, the three-star transfer is a prototype for O’Brien’s style and left high school with a reputation for pocket toughness. His arm strength and footwork projected to a multiple-set offense based around single-back formations and multiple tight end formations, and his junior year numbers in high school produced nearly 3,500 yards with a touchdown-to-interception ratio just below 11:1. He was raw at Alabama, but his potential drew him to O’Brien, who was the offensive coordinator for the former two-sport athlete’s recruitment.
“He’s had an interesting journey,” said O’Brien. “He was a highly-recruited guy who went to Alabama. It’s hard to play at Alabama. They had some great quarterbacks there. There’s one at Pittsburgh today, one at Ohio State today. There are guys that were in that quarterback room that are at all different places…Dylan has had an incredible journey, from Brookwood High School in Atlanta to Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama, and today to Boston College. He’s a great student. He’s a hell of a football player. We’re happy to have him here.”
Debating a quarterback room is always popular fodder for the water cooler, but naming a starter for the Fordham game isn’t about settling a rivalry or ending a competition because it’s more about showcasing the team’s growth over the past two weeks. The chemistry on the field, the cohesion between players at every position, is a critical alchemy to immediate success, and O’Brien understood the growth element in his approach to practice.
Settling on a starting quarterback is one of many necessary steps a team must take ahead of its season opener. It’s a hardening of the concrete poured over the first two weeks, and it’s designed to put the team on the strongest foundation for those first games. It’s not about success or failure in November, nor is it about obtaining a national ranking or premier bowl game, even if those are the desired end goals.
It’s instead about winning the present day and improving the team in the days and weeks after naming the starter. It’s simply about getting better today, which O’Brien and his players understand is the core piece of how to obtain success for the future.
“We’ve got a tough football team,” said O’Brien. “We’ve got a team that knows how to take care of each other while getting a lot out of practice. I thought we were more competitive [on Tuesday] than we were in last Saturday’s scrimmage. I want to see that leading up to Saturday, when we have another controlled scrimmage… It’s the toughest part of camp. It’s the middle of camp…They’ve got to take care of their bodies.
“We’ve got great leadership on this team,” he said. “There’s a lot of things to clean up. It’s definitely a work in progress in many ways, but I’m very happy with how this team approaches practice.”
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